The Marion County School Board will be voting on an “emergency” resolution next Tuesday, April 26th that will prohibit transgender students from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity.

The “Gender Inspection” resolution will require that all students be restricted to using the bathroom that corresponds with their “biological sex” assigned at birth, regardless of how a student identifies. If passed, this resolution will be enforced starting Wednesday morning, stigmatizing transgender and gender nonconforming kids and putting them at risk for further harassment and bullying.

5 comments:

I suggest you may be painting with too broad a brush. A person who has undergone sex reassignment surgery is one thing. Someone who has decided to self identify or is "gender fluid" is a different thing entirely. The place where the real problem comes up isn't the restroom. It's the locker room. The Obama administration takes the position that denying a high school boy who self identifies as female the chance to use the girls' locker room is a violation of the law that can result in a loss of federal funding. Whatever those who favor co-ed locker rooms may say, what about the rights of those women and girls, or men and boys, who believe it is a violation of their rights of privacy to have someone of the opposite sex wandering around in the locker room.

The issue of transgender folks and m/f designated public toilets could be easily fixed by going to unisex public toilets. Somewhere I read, a piss is just a piss. One unisex public toilet for all. Gender equality. Someone should design a really good unisex public toilet. Perhaps make the stall walls longer at the bottom, a better latch, better construction to eliminate openings for "peepers", whatever. It's a unisex public toilet. Not a bathroom, no one is taking a bath in a public toilet. It's not a restroom either, you don't go to a public toilet to rest.

Jewel's video shows a unisex public toilet can work, https://youtu.be/0wBDDAZkNtk

Thanks for that 8:52! My favorite club in NYC has a unisex bathroom. It's really not a big deal.

This speaks well to the issue:

"I’m the father of a 21 year old daughter. There are lots of things I worry about. I worry about her being sexually assaulted, because that happens a lot. I worry about her being the victim of a drunk driver, because that happens a lot. I worry about her being the victim of gun violence, because lots of people die from gun-related injuries. Here’s what I do not worry about: I don’t worry about her being attacked in a restroom by a trans woman because (a) it has never happened; and (b) trans women are the most victimized group of people I’ve ever met, and the least likely to commit a crime of indecency in a restroom, because they are afraid of getting beat up when all they want to do is pee. And here is something else I don’t worry about: I don’t worry about my daughter being cruel and inhumane to trans men, women or kids, because my wife and I have raised her to have values and because she is a kind person. There are things to worry about. and then there are things people want you to worry about to conceal their agenda of discrimination and hate. Wake up." ~ Steve Rudner

While traveling from Paris to Mont St. Michel, the tour bus made several stops along the way, and was my first experience with a unisex public toilet. That was 28 years ago. The French unisex public toilets that I encountered had a different feel, comfortable and homey, like found in a luxury hotel; not like the typical public toilet found in the United States, industrial looking and too often reeking of urine odor.

This is a good opportunity to address the public toilet situation in America, and make positive changes that benefit everyone. While I don’t have a dog in this fight, its time people put aside prejudices, or just their long-held unquestioned views, and figure this thing out. Otherwise the cranks in places like Marion County Florida will do it for you, with bad results.